Half Wollstonecraft, Half LOLcats: Talking with Caitlin Moran

In 2011, the London Times columnist Caitlin Moran published “How to Be a Woman,” a book that combined personal essays with an outline of the state of—and need for—feminism today. The book was a best-seller in England, and, by the summer of 2012, in America as well, thanks in large part to Moran’s brutally funny approach to a serious topic. “What do you think feminism IS, ladies?” she writes, after stating that only twenty-nine per cent of American women describe themselves as feminists. “What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue,’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY?”

Moran’s latest book, “Moranthology,” a collection of her columns for the Times, has just been published. She recently answered some questions on feminism, writers who have influenced her, celebrities, and sex; an edited version of the exchange follows.

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The columns collected in “Moranthology” cover such a wide range of topics and genres: feminism, of course, but also celebrity interviews, parenting, poverty, “Downton Abbey,” and late-night half-asleep talks with your husband. Do you have a favorite sort of column to write?

I like it when I’ve got a meaty topic to fly into—I wrote one about my experiences with schizophrenia recently that I was inordinately proud of. “Broken reason cannot mend broken reason.” Mental health is seen as a massive drag to have to write about—worthy, dull. Something you should “have” to read / write about. Like feminism, I guess. Or another one of my hobbyhorses: socialism. But I find all these topics thrilling to write about—ideas about freedom, consideration for other mental states. The idea of an equal world, and just how liberating and God-damned exciting that might be. Writing about those things—and I will be frank—turns me on. I like a little bit of revolution. I think it’s a very good hobby for a young woman. Better than squash.

But, on the other hand, there’s nothing quite like sitting down with a cup of tea and writing about how, given that that man died in bed with her, Lady Mary from “Downton Abbey” technically now has a haunted vagina. I would say I am half Wollstonecraft, half LOLcats.

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It’s as if “How to Be a Woman” anticipated the current political and cultural conversation—contraception, abortion, equal pay, “having it all”—and sought to give women, particularly younger ones, talking points on identifying as feminists. Did you foresee this cultural and political moment? Or was “How to Be a Woman” the book you were simply writing at that point in your life?

I could see that there was a massive, terrifying gap where nothing was being written about feminism / the experiences of women in a way that women would actually want to read and identify with. I thought, Not only is that gap something I could fill with all the ideas I’ve been having about feminism for the past twenty years but I estimate that a book about it will turn out to gross a massive payment off my mortgage. And so it proved to be.

It was obvious to me that things would get worse for women, because, culturally, the language used to talk about women and the images we see of women have become so sour and restrictive. I wrote “How to be a Woman” for my sister: a twenty-five-year-old single mother living on benefits, who’s never read a book in her life, and only reads celebrity magazines and watches “Jerry Springer” or MTV. She has no idea what feminism is, other than something from the olden days that’s a bore. I thought, The only images she ever sees of women are either of celebrities with “circles of shame” around their sweat patches or berating them for having put on ten pounds or “trailer trash” mums being screamed at by an audience. Her view of being a woman is so terrifying and restrictive. As her older sister, I want to put my hands on her shoulder and go, “The reason you feel weird is because this culture is being rude to you. This has become a very impolite society toward women.” I wanted to write a book that would make her go, “That happened to me! And that! And that!,” so she didn’t feel weird about being a normal woman anymore. And then I wanted to go, “Do you know what feminism actually is? It just means women being equal to men. That whatever they get, and feel comfortable with, we get, and feel comfortable with, too. Are you a feminist?” And she rang me the day she read the book, and went, “I’m a feminist. I’ve always been a feminist.” And I cried. And wished I’d charged her for the book.

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In most of the articles I’ve read about “How to Be a Woman,” the chapter most often mentioned is the one on your abortion. You write about abortion in “Moranthology” as well, though not from such a personal perspective. What made you decide to write about your own experience?

The idea of not being able to control my own fertility genuinely terrifies me. That one mistake might change your life. That everything I am, and do, could be ended by the repeal of laws our mothers fought so hard for, that women had waited for the entire span of humanity to come about. Because that’s what the anti-abortion movement would want: a situation where no woman is ever allowed to make a single mistake without bearing the consequences for the rest of her life. Just like we used to have, until very recently.

Imagine a parallel in the lives of men. You go out one night, get drunk, and lose, badly, at poker. You wake the next morning, and someone turns up on your doorstep with a twenty-five-year-old man called “Ray,” tells you, “You’re now financially and morally responsible for this man for the rest of your life,” and then walks away, leaving you with Ray. That’s what not allowing women to rectify—quickly, safely, and legally—an accidental pregnancy is like. Except the Ray version is still easier, because he’s a fully grown man—not a tiny baby you have to labor out of your body, and breast-feed, and tend to at 4:30 A.M., and give up work for. Maybe risk your life or your sanity or your continence for. The unkindness of not letting women decide when they want to be parents takes my breath away. Not only for the simple inhumanity of the act but also because I feel it demeans parenting. It suggests that these people think you can parent terrified, unwillingly, exhaustedly, when you simply don’t wish to. And maybe some people can. But I believe in giving a parent-child relationship the most favorable start possible. And that favorable start begins, for me, with deciding that you want the baby in the first place. Not hoping that you love it nine months down the line, after the government has invaded your body, forced your hand. Women have always aborted. Women always will. No kind government would make a thing that will inevitably happen dangerous, and illegal, again.

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Related: In “How to Be a Woman,” you’ve written about naming your vagina, the cultural expectation of bikini waxes, and what I’ve found to be one of the funniest, most accurate depictions of a teen-age girl’s obsession with masturbation in print. Given your experience in writing about sex and your body, I’m curious as to what you make of the discussion about Naomi Wolf’s “Vagina: A New Biography.”

Aw, thanks for the wank praise. I claim my wank crown with pride. I don’t think it happened on purpose at all, but it did seem that a lot of writers piled in and kicked Naomi Wolf’s “Vagina” to death in a slightly over-the-top manner. I’ve not read the book, but I would uphold any woman’s right to write a lengthy, indulgent memoir about her genitals. Or, indeed, her bum-hole. I’d love a book about bum-holes. Hahaha—they’re like a cupboard people put things in. If you talk to a nurse, she’ll tell you about patients coming in with rueful faces and all sorts up there. Pinecones. Candles. An action man. “Oooh, my hands are full. I know where I’ll put this random item! Up my bum-hole!” Amazing. Anyway, back to vaginas. I find the idea of a book all about vaginas—even one specific one—more interesting and important than, say, Hemingway wanging on about fishing. More vag-chat! More vag-chat for the 3.3 billion people who have them and feel a bit embarrassed about them, worry about them, try to keep them secret, and see them as their weakness or regard them with fear. The world can only be made a better—and, let’s face it, frequently more amusing—place if women openly discuss their “secret handbags.”

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Your interviews in “Moranthology”—with people like Lady Gaga, Keith Richards, and Paul McCartney—are very insightful. Who’s the icon you’d most like to interview next?

I’ve actually gotten to the point where I don’t want to interview any more idols. By and large, are these people ever going to be more potent, useful, and comforting than the music they make, which is in your head every day—as you run for the bus, as you cry, as you dance on a table with a load of drag queens at 3 A.M.? I also kind of think: Why take up their time? People at that level are so busy. Every twenty minutes is accounted for. The way you truly show respect is to let these people have that twenty minutes back—say, “I don’t need to interview you,” and let them have a lovely long hot bath instead. Have that hot bath on me, Michelle Obama. I shall not trouble you today.

On the other hand, I reckon that Bill Murray and I could have a fucking excellent night out. I adore his attitude toward fame. That thing where he goes up to people, hugs them, registers their astonishment—then says, “And the funny thing is, no one will ever believe you!,” and runs away? I was inspired by that. I saw someone in a café, reading my book in a window seat. She was laughing her balls off. Proper tears running down her face. I thought, What would Bill Murray do? Why, he would walk up to that window, rap on it, and do a kind of “Guess what! It’s your lucky day! It’s meeeeeeee!”

The woman in the window stared up at me like I was some crazy trying to panhandle her for a kidney, or a child. “Can I help you, distressing item?” her face said. To try to clarify things, I—slightly sweatily, as the whole café had looked up after I knocked on the window—tried to mime: “It’s me! The person who wrote the book”—I pointed—“in your hands! Me! Typey Typerson!!!!”

She continued to stare at me as if I’d wanged a dead rat at the window.

In the end, I just mouthed, “Sorry, lady!” and ran away. It’s actually more difficult being Bill Murray than you’d think.

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A perfect segue for my last questions: What are the key ingredients needed for a situation to become the basis of a great story? And which writers do you turn to for inspiration?

I love Dickens, for showing how you modulate from being a journalist writing about issues into being a novelist who dramatizes those issues for a much wider audience. I’m currently reading his entire works in chronological order, in order to steal every single move he makes. Truman Capote, for the ruthless way he hones and hones pages until there’s no grit, no snags—the whole thing just floats off the page, like blossom falling upwards. Jane Bussmann’s memoir, “The Worst Date Ever,” is so savagely funny and unsparing—she’s a Hollywood journalist-screenwriter who falls in love with an activist and ends up embroiled in a secret war in Africa, all the time worried about her hair and her humanity—and it really pushed me to be totally honest in “How to Be a Woman.” Bussmann was so honest about the media in her book that I thought, Wow, you really might never work as a journalist again—and you risk it all in order to tell that incredibly funny anecdote about Ashton Kutcher being a dick. You are my hero. Tina Fey makes me want to wear a massive tricorn hat so I can ostentatiously doff it to her, should I ever meet her.

As for key ingredients for a situation to become the basis of a great story? A combination of pissing yourself laughing when you think about it and the small realization that if you exaggerated it by twenty-seven per cent it would be even better.

Photograph by Adam Lawrence.

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